Of course you don't understand, because you don't need them, you can't understand freedom of expression if you never had anything to say, you can't understand privacy if you never had anything to hide, if you were living in a country like mine, Argentina, you would understand immediately the incredibly useful thing that Bitcoin is.

I have a Swiss bank in my pocket, in a country that steals all your savings every ten years and the central bank destroys you with inflation.

I have an international payment system, I can send and receive money in minutes to whomever I want, without asking permission from anyone, without the government or the bank stealing it from me. From a place where it is sinful to take your money out of the country.

It's the difference between existing or not in the world, and you have no idea how incredible it is to be able to pass an Argentine crisis without your family suffering hunger, no centralized system could give me something similar at such a low cost.

Basically, it's Internet money. So like the Internet, it's very difficult for governments to fsck with. They can try, of course, but there will always be levels of overlay networks that they can't touch. This is one aspect of the cypherpunk vision.

Being ~anonymous online, cryptocurrencies are my only option for buying and selling stuff online. Leasing VPN services, servers, VPS, etc. Getting paid for writing and other consulting work.

The speculation aspect is just meme-driven bullshit. What we need is cryptocurrencies with stable values, for online commerce. I'm not sure what you mean by "aspirin" vs "vitamins". But for me, getting out from under the thumb of government is extremely interesting.

> I'd like to see some actual examples.

I used Bitcoin to cover a flight a few years back when the only other options were PayPal or using a European bank deposit (0).

More recently I also paid for graduate studies in Bitcoin (1). Granted, it was for an MSc in cryptocurrency but the process was still just so... easy. I did it while in bed here in Canada to a university in Cyprus. It took about five minutes and the school converted the funds to euros right away. When I compare this to waiting 1-2 weeks to move funds from Canada to Europe for previous studies (as well as the ~€100 in fees), I can definitely see a bullish case for crypto, especially for bigger international payments.

0: https://www.airbaltic.com/en/payment-options

1: https://digitalcurrency.unic.ac.cy/admissions/financial-info...

Are there any resources describing the patent issues for hash chains? Have patents expired, or does cryptocurrency somehow work around them?

Sibling comments to this one have already written down most of what I would say myself. In short, I think having a way to transfer money anonymously and without control from the government an especially important capability.